I will remind you that the USSR restored its economy to pre-war standards in just 5 years, after losing 27 million people and incalculable cost of destruction, while keeping pensions and social safety nets intact, without relying on foreign aid and investments like the Marshall Plan, and without degrading workers’ rights and wages.
There is not a single country in the history of humanity that can even remotely approach this level of economic and social achievements. None.
Not sure about DPRK but Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China all had incredible growth at some points but none came even remotely close to the economic growth of USSR from 1929-1955 under Stalin’s Five-Year Plans.
Didn’t the Soviets sort of cannibalize most of the german industry within the Soviet Occupation Area, prior to that area being turned into the DDR? Or was the relocation of eastern german industry a later thing?
Not sure I get what you mean. The Soviet industrial capacity already far surpassed the German industry even before the end of the war. This was why the Soviets won, not the Germans. The Germans already ran into severe supplying issues for their military equipment after 1942, the Soviets never really faced this problem as they had a solid industrial base that was already in full swing before the Nazi invasion, and rapidly expanded during the war.
They did however gain access to some high tech instruments (for example, German-built gyroscopes for V2 rockets which was far ahead of anything the Soviets had at the time), but much of the critical high tech military industries had been destroyed during the retreat to prevent them from falling into the Soviet hands. The entire leadership and high ranking scientists of the V2 rocket project, for example, surrendered to the Americans.
See @[email protected] comment above for a more precise description. The Soviets relocated / took some industrial plants partly as reparations and partly in case of allied invasion prior to the development of their own nuclear bomb.
Yeah, there was both immediate extraction of the industrial capacity of what was largely already a poorer area (both as reparations and because they weren’t sure the allies would stop at the Elbe), and then afterwards the DDR sent a lot of resources to the USSR as well (because the USSR required massive military resources for collective defence that could compete with the west). One of the reasons it didn’t quite keep up with the GDR’s development (the other was that the USA absolutely poured resources into West Germany to make it an anti-communist showpiece.)
But actually the Soviets ended up putting quite a few factories back after the war. The famine of 1946 affected Germany even harder than the USSR and the occupation government realised that they needed to rebuild the economy for the long haul and that the eastern bloc could take advantage of a relatively highly educated populace
Yes, this is an awful thing phased as a good one. “The standard of living in russia in 1950 was so incredibly low, that not even an entire world war made all that much of a difference in the standard of livng.”
Incredibly low compared to whom? The US that had a couple hundred years of head start from exploiting black slaves (where do you think all the wealth in the American South came from) and looting resources from overseas colonies?
The fact that the USSR was able to close the gap in such a short period of time was exactly the reason of widespread anti-communist propaganda, the meddling of political affairs in post-war Europe including arming fascists through Gladio to destroy the European left, and ironically, financial aid to rebuild Western Europe because they were really afraid of workers uprisings bringing post-war Europe towards the Soviet sphere.
The US that had a couple hundred years of head start
tsarist russia wasn’t a barren patch of dirt, they’d also collected a bunch of capital from imperialism, it was certainly behind the US or germany in the 1890s but not so severely as to constitute ‘hundreds of years’ of development. the bolsheviks actually in large part came from and used a genuine industrial proletariat, in contrast to China which had to have a much higher reliance on the peasantry. let’s not muddle our narratives of communist development here
The Russian Civil War from 1917-1922 created massive destruction with millions of casualties, together with great famines that were partially caused by petty bourgeoisie destroying their stock. The bourgeoisie would rather burn down the country rather than having the communists have them. That was why Lenin had to introduce NEP because supplies and goods were in such shortage that they could barely get their economy going.
Stalin said in 1931:
We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.
Socialist industrialization was what saved the world from Nazism.
Besides the Tsars literally prevented industrialization like many other european royalties (like poland or two sicilies for example). So there were only foreign-owned industrial zones in the big cities.
The USSR took a backwater state that was still stuck in feudalism (meaning fucking serfdom) and within a single human generation sent the first person into space. They started from a way worse state than the west and made incredible achievements. They did this without the help of first world powers, and were even hindered by constant economic warfare to boot.
Yeah, you can visit ex Soviet states and see the degradation. Most of their failing infrastructure was built under Soviet planning and has since gone to rot. Economic liberalization has brought nothing to the table, and has obviously failed utterly at whatever promises we’re made initially.
None of what I’m saying is even debatable. The economic truths of the USSR are easily learned. YOU are a western chauvinist dipshit who looks at the achievements of actual socialism and without a single bit of historical material understanding spouts some ignorant bullshit. I’ll be clear: save your breath to instead talk about whatever authoritarian atrocities were supposedly dealt out. When you talk about the economic failures of the USSR you are treading on ahistorical bullshit that has no real ground.
Yeah sure, with all the licensed and stolen western tech. Mother russia couldn’t even mass produce a consumer automobile SOMEONE ELSE DESIGNED FOR THEM. This was the state of soviet manufacturing. Outdated western designs built in a that’ll do fashion.
The United States had von Braun and the entire V2 rocket team, together with intact copies of V2, and still lost to the Soviets in the ICBM race who had to reverse engineer everything from scratch!
And by the way, the V2 was a really really shitty rocket compared even to R-2 (the first Soviet designed rocket after replicating V2/R-1), and they can’t even be compared to the R-7, the world’s first ICBM. That’s how far they took the technology forward.
You said the standards of living in the USSR in 1950 was “incredibly low”, have you ever lived in former British and French colonies in Asia?
Many countries in Asia still haven’t yet achieved independence by 1950, and I can assure you that the standards of living in the USSR was already leaps and bounds beyond most of the world at the time, and comparable to post-war Western Europe and would have easily surpassed them if Western Europe never had the luxury of receiving the vast amount of financial aid from their American masters through the Marshall Plan.
Yes because this is how geopolitics work. The USSR basically entirely in Europe. The living standards should be comparable to what europe was like. And not what africa was like. Or Mars.
It was comparable to Western Europe even without the Marshall Plan, what are you talking about lol. This is 1950 we’re talking about, much of Europe was still in ruins thanks to Nazism.
Like honestly, I won’t comment on any of this anymore. But where are you guys from? Because you are either Russian, and sucking the dicks of a failed dictator, or you are from several continents away, with no context to any of this, and then you just are a bunch of useful idiots to a failed dictator. Answer this one honestly. Either to me or to yourselves…
I hardly think the guy who beat the nazis and raised standards of living in the USSR from borderline starvation to comparable with western Europe in a couple decades a failure. There were regular famines before Stalin; after Stalin there were none until capitalism reversed all that progress, immiserated the populace, and decreased all measurements of human development by similar numbers to WWII.
The living standards should be comparable to what europe was like. And not what africa was like. Or Mars.
I don’t think geographic location is as significant as a country’s, you know, history. Just because they were in Europe doesn’t mean that they were starting out on equal footing. If you compare the state of Russia under the tsar to somewhere like Britain or France, then it’s clear that the Soviets were starting from a disadvantage. Moreover, they were under constant economic and military threats from most of the developed world. In spite of all of that, they were able to develop quickly enough to defeat the Nazis and become a global superpower.
So a backwoods country full of starving and dying peasants cannot be compared to a backwoods colony full of starving and dying peasants in another continent? Lmao. I suppose the only thing you can’t really compare is the military since Russian/soviet soldiers were experienced from imperialist wars during the empire.
Also it’s a bit rich to use the “muh post soviet poverty shit hole” line when it was the wests neoliberal economic shock doctrine that caused such a tragedy in the first place.
Yes because you have no idea… Which is fine, but then you should be less confident about your world views on isolated political systems full of self propaganda…
No one here is being propagandized. You do not get Marxist propaganda defending the USSR in the west. Almost all of us grew up with the very opposite. The majority of us have had to spend our own time reading and learning. Sorry mate, but you are the one steeped in propaganda and I’d love for you to prove otherwise
Most of us have, obviously. Please, educate me on your experience with soviet cars.
Not that I give a shit. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but cars haven’t been a very intelligent mode of transportation for modern civilization, given the fact that they’re wildly inefficient and the fuel they burn is literally destroying the worlds ecosystem. Guess there’s trains though, right? Can’t imagine the Soviets being much good at trains though. I wonder how the Chinese are doing with trains?
Yes that’s true… I have no idea about the sheer trauma… Of having to share 1 communal toothbrush with the entire city… Or when Stalin took out his big spoon and ate literally 70% of everyone’s cheerios in one bite… Truly horrible…
I didn’t know the specter of communism haunted post USSR countries so bad that they became poor after becoming independent. I suggest they take out another loan from the IMF and turn their retired elderly workers into protein paste
If you look for it, you can find a video of children offering themselves up as prostitutes in post-Soviet collapse Russia. Please really stop and think about what would force someone to have to do that. When we think of some generic image of an Eastern Bloc, post-Soviet shithole, whatever your mental picture is wasn’t created by that nation. You’re thinking of a post-collapse nation. We have our own in America called the Rust Belt. We don’t blame the existence of ford and general motors as causing the dilapidation of Detroit. Their departure and subsequent economic collapse destroyed that region. It’s a similar story writ large all over the former Second World.
And sure, Soviet cars sucked. Fortunately most people didn’t need them.
I will remind you that the USSR restored its economy to pre-war standards in just 5 years, after losing 27 million people and incalculable cost of destruction, while keeping pensions and social safety nets intact, without relying on foreign aid and investments like the Marshall Plan, and without degrading workers’ rights and wages.
There is not a single country in the history of humanity that can even remotely approach this level of economic and social achievements. None.
The DPRK after the Korean War had incredibly fast growth iirc
The standard of living was higher in the North until, I think, the 70s?
Not sure about DPRK but Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China all had incredible growth at some points but none came even remotely close to the economic growth of USSR from 1929-1955 under Stalin’s Five-Year Plans.
The DPRK had a rapid recovery (thanks to its allies), but then went into a catastrophic crash in the '90s after the USSR was destroyed.
Didn’t the Soviets sort of cannibalize most of the german industry within the Soviet Occupation Area, prior to that area being turned into the DDR? Or was the relocation of eastern german industry a later thing?
Eastern German industry was:
Concentrated in Saxony, Thüringen and Berlin, and mostly composed of ore mining.
Not untouched by WW2.
Subject to Capital flight in the earliest years of existence from frightened capitalists relocating to the west
Not sure I get what you mean. The Soviet industrial capacity already far surpassed the German industry even before the end of the war. This was why the Soviets won, not the Germans. The Germans already ran into severe supplying issues for their military equipment after 1942, the Soviets never really faced this problem as they had a solid industrial base that was already in full swing before the Nazi invasion, and rapidly expanded during the war.
They did however gain access to some high tech instruments (for example, German-built gyroscopes for V2 rockets which was far ahead of anything the Soviets had at the time), but much of the critical high tech military industries had been destroyed during the retreat to prevent them from falling into the Soviet hands. The entire leadership and high ranking scientists of the V2 rocket project, for example, surrendered to the Americans.
See @[email protected] comment above for a more precise description. The Soviets relocated / took some industrial plants partly as reparations and partly in case of allied invasion prior to the development of their own nuclear bomb.
Yeah, there was both immediate extraction of the industrial capacity of what was largely already a poorer area (both as reparations and because they weren’t sure the allies would stop at the Elbe), and then afterwards the DDR sent a lot of resources to the USSR as well (because the USSR required massive military resources for collective defence that could compete with the west). One of the reasons it didn’t quite keep up with the GDR’s development (the other was that the USA absolutely poured resources into West Germany to make it an anti-communist showpiece.)
But actually the Soviets ended up putting quite a few factories back after the war. The famine of 1946 affected Germany even harder than the USSR and the occupation government realised that they needed to rebuild the economy for the long haul and that the eastern bloc could take advantage of a relatively highly educated populace
Yes, this is an awful thing phased as a good one. “The standard of living in russia in 1950 was so incredibly low, that not even an entire world war made all that much of a difference in the standard of livng.”
Incredibly low compared to whom? The US that had a couple hundred years of head start from exploiting black slaves (where do you think all the wealth in the American South came from) and looting resources from overseas colonies?
The fact that the USSR was able to close the gap in such a short period of time was exactly the reason of widespread anti-communist propaganda, the meddling of political affairs in post-war Europe including arming fascists through Gladio to destroy the European left, and ironically, financial aid to rebuild Western Europe because they were really afraid of workers uprisings bringing post-war Europe towards the Soviet sphere.
Hey this isn’t simulated liberalism at all, I’ve been had!
tsarist russia wasn’t a barren patch of dirt, they’d also collected a bunch of capital from imperialism, it was certainly behind the US or germany in the 1890s but not so severely as to constitute ‘hundreds of years’ of development. the bolsheviks actually in large part came from and used a genuine industrial proletariat, in contrast to China which had to have a much higher reliance on the peasantry. let’s not muddle our narratives of communist development here
The Russian Civil War from 1917-1922 created massive destruction with millions of casualties, together with great famines that were partially caused by petty bourgeoisie destroying their stock. The bourgeoisie would rather burn down the country rather than having the communists have them. That was why Lenin had to introduce NEP because supplies and goods were in such shortage that they could barely get their economy going.
Stalin said in 1931:
Socialist industrialization was what saved the world from Nazism.
that Stalin quote is a perfect support for what i said, thanks!
i’m urging against exaggeration, i’m not ignorant of the civil war & challenges of industrialization
Besides the Tsars literally prevented industrialization like many other european royalties (like poland or two sicilies for example). So there were only foreign-owned industrial zones in the big cities.
Least illiterate neoliberal
Yeah have you ever lived in the USSR? Have you ever been to a post soviet country? Yeah…
Damn, countries suck AFTER the socialist system was abandoned and everything was looted by liberal vultures???
I always love these “socialism sucks in [ex USSR country]. Proof: i was born in 1995” type posts
The USSR took a backwater state that was still stuck in feudalism (meaning fucking serfdom) and within a single human generation sent the first person into space. They started from a way worse state than the west and made incredible achievements. They did this without the help of first world powers, and were even hindered by constant economic warfare to boot.
Yeah, you can visit ex Soviet states and see the degradation. Most of their failing infrastructure was built under Soviet planning and has since gone to rot. Economic liberalization has brought nothing to the table, and has obviously failed utterly at whatever promises we’re made initially.
None of what I’m saying is even debatable. The economic truths of the USSR are easily learned. YOU are a western chauvinist dipshit who looks at the achievements of actual socialism and without a single bit of historical material understanding spouts some ignorant bullshit. I’ll be clear: save your breath to instead talk about whatever authoritarian atrocities were supposedly dealt out. When you talk about the economic failures of the USSR you are treading on ahistorical bullshit that has no real ground.
at what cost!?
Yeah sure, with all the licensed and stolen western tech. Mother russia couldn’t even mass produce a consumer automobile SOMEONE ELSE DESIGNED FOR THEM. This was the state of soviet manufacturing. Outdated western designs built in a that’ll do fashion.
Literally regurgitating nazi garbage, no exaggeration. Good job.
Lib got scratched
Which Western company was Sputnik and Soyuz licensed from?
The United States had von Braun and the entire V2 rocket team, together with intact copies of V2, and still lost to the Soviets in the ICBM race who had to reverse engineer everything from scratch!
And by the way, the V2 was a really really shitty rocket compared even to R-2 (the first Soviet designed rocket after replicating V2/R-1), and they can’t even be compared to the R-7, the world’s first ICBM. That’s how far they took the technology forward.
You said the standards of living in the USSR in 1950 was “incredibly low”, have you ever lived in former British and French colonies in Asia?
Many countries in Asia still haven’t yet achieved independence by 1950, and I can assure you that the standards of living in the USSR was already leaps and bounds beyond most of the world at the time, and comparable to post-war Western Europe and would have easily surpassed them if Western Europe never had the luxury of receiving the vast amount of financial aid from their American masters through the Marshall Plan.
Yes because this is how geopolitics work. The USSR basically entirely in Europe. The living standards should be comparable to what europe was like. And not what africa was like. Or Mars.
It was comparable to Western Europe even without the Marshall Plan, what are you talking about lol. This is 1950 we’re talking about, much of Europe was still in ruins thanks to Nazism.
Like honestly, I won’t comment on any of this anymore. But where are you guys from? Because you are either Russian, and sucking the dicks of a failed dictator, or you are from several continents away, with no context to any of this, and then you just are a bunch of useful idiots to a failed dictator. Answer this one honestly. Either to me or to yourselves…
man got owned so hard he dropped the mask, went straight for homophobia, then dropped the dorkiest line i’ve ever read on lemmy lmao
I hardly think the guy who beat the nazis and raised standards of living in the USSR from borderline starvation to comparable with western Europe in a couple decades a failure. There were regular famines before Stalin; after Stalin there were none until capitalism reversed all that progress, immiserated the populace, and decreased all measurements of human development by similar numbers to WWII.
The CIA admits he wasn’t a dictator, merely representing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I don’t think geographic location is as significant as a country’s, you know, history. Just because they were in Europe doesn’t mean that they were starting out on equal footing. If you compare the state of Russia under the tsar to somewhere like Britain or France, then it’s clear that the Soviets were starting from a disadvantage. Moreover, they were under constant economic and military threats from most of the developed world. In spite of all of that, they were able to develop quickly enough to defeat the Nazis and become a global superpower.
I’m curious, what do you mean by low living standards?
What do you think people were lacking?
Jeans, pizza, Gucci hand bags, and the Beatles
This is a child’s understanding of how development works.
paradox map painter brain
So a backwoods country full of starving and dying peasants cannot be compared to a backwoods colony full of starving and dying peasants in another continent? Lmao. I suppose the only thing you can’t really compare is the military since Russian/soviet soldiers were experienced from imperialist wars during the empire.
Yes I do wish I lived in the USSR at it’s prime.
Also it’s a bit rich to use the “muh post soviet poverty shit hole” line when it was the wests neoliberal economic shock doctrine that caused such a tragedy in the first place.
Yes because you have no idea… Which is fine, but then you should be less confident about your world views on isolated political systems full of self propaganda…
No one here is being propagandized. You do not get Marxist propaganda defending the USSR in the west. Almost all of us grew up with the very opposite. The majority of us have had to spend our own time reading and learning. Sorry mate, but you are the one steeped in propaganda and I’d love for you to prove otherwise
Have you driven a soviet made car?
we had an 80s lada riva when i was a kid
it was fine
my mum preferred it to the austin montego we had next
Most of us have, obviously. Please, educate me on your experience with soviet cars.
Not that I give a shit. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but cars haven’t been a very intelligent mode of transportation for modern civilization, given the fact that they’re wildly inefficient and the fuel they burn is literally destroying the worlds ecosystem. Guess there’s trains though, right? Can’t imagine the Soviets being much good at trains though. I wonder how the Chinese are doing with trains?
Have you ever ridden an American-made train?
this mf still talkin bout cars like anybody gives a shit
“Have you ever driven something that no longer exists and costs a fortune to acquire, because consuming product = supporting ideology?”
The answer is no, I haven’t. Because communism no money unfortunately.
Legend 4x4 Lada Niva
Oh the irony.
deleted by creator
Yes that’s true… I have no idea about the sheer trauma… Of having to share 1 communal toothbrush with the entire city… Or when Stalin took out his big spoon and ate literally 70% of everyone’s cheerios in one bite… Truly horrible…
I didn’t know the specter of communism haunted post USSR countries so bad that they became poor after becoming independent. I suggest they take out another loan from the IMF and turn their retired elderly workers into protein paste
deleted by creator
If you look for it, you can find a video of children offering themselves up as prostitutes in post-Soviet collapse Russia. Please really stop and think about what would force someone to have to do that. When we think of some generic image of an Eastern Bloc, post-Soviet shithole, whatever your mental picture is wasn’t created by that nation. You’re thinking of a post-collapse nation. We have our own in America called the Rust Belt. We don’t blame the existence of ford and general motors as causing the dilapidation of Detroit. Their departure and subsequent economic collapse destroyed that region. It’s a similar story writ large all over the former Second World.
And sure, Soviet cars sucked. Fortunately most people didn’t need them.
Human trafficking increased in post USSR countries and so did austerity. No offense to any comrades there, but I’m not sure I want to visit
Making shit up and hoping no one will notice huh? You really aren’t giving it your best
The Soviet Union was the fastest industrializing state in the interwar period, come up with better propaganda
Lmao mate you can’t just make shit up what are you doing. Read a fucking book.
Yeah, Russia was just a dirt farm and the Nazis killing 27 million people was just kinda whatevs. I have a serious conception of history.
Still seething the Soviets beat the US to space.
Please try actually looking at historical data before assuming the Cold War propaganda you have absorbed for a lifetime is true.